Tuesday, May 15, 2012

#error37 trending on Twitter

And to be honest, I saw that coming a little. Even though it's happened before not too long ago. Remember the open beta weekend? Wow, that was chaotic. I might've expected Blizzard to be more ready than that, but the truth is, we've been waiting for this game for way too damn long, so it doesn't surprise me at all that millions of rabid fans would try getting on the servers all at once. And this is why I decided to get a good night of sleep anyway. Staying up at and beyond 3 AM is just torture at my age. (Though I guess not if your name is Andrei Kostitsyn.)

So naturally many people are raging over the fact that unlike the first two games, there's no offline single-player mode. But you have to understand why they did that, and it goes beyond the usual accusations of DRM. The official excuse, that "people get confused because they can't take their single-player characters online", is definitely the weakest argument they could possibly offer. The fact is, they went to great lengths to create an economy that would be more compelling than in Diablo 2, AND they added a real money component to it (more on that later). That means that they have the moral obligation to keep the game as pure as possible, with as little hacks and dupes as possible. And it just so happens that offline single-player is the perfect testing grounds for such exploits. Diablo 2 fell prey to them easily, and they're obviously not okay with the idea of history repeating itself. So I'm in the minority on this, but I really think that online-only is for the better... in this particular case. Of course it's unneeded in many games that take this approach, but there's a very good argument that can be made for it here.

Speaking of the RMAH. People seem to complain that it's a ploy to make Blizzard more money. Except it's completely optional (unlike, say, paying your WoW subscription), and you can sell gold for real money anyway, so if you see an item you want on the RMAH, you can just sell the corresponding amount of gold beforehand. So, um, a private company wants to earn extra profits, and it's bad because it's Blizzard? I swear, Blizzard has the same aura as Nintendo in that people put them on a pedestal by thinking they're above money-grubbing. THEY'RE NOT CHARITIES. DEAL WITH IT.

Yup'! Except that they came back to club KAOS's room with their laptop and I was there laughing pretty hard while playing Pokemon Fire Red on my good old GBA SP that will sadly soon be replaced by a 3DS because I think I'm on the right track for THE job I need. :D